Washington --
June 25, 2007

As renowned oceanographer Sylvia Earle plunged 3,288 feet into the depths of the Pacific, something briefly glimmered in the tiny lights of her compact submersible.

Was that glint, perhaps, a new species of fish? A bioluminescent plant? A yet-undiscovered sea creature?

None of the above. It was - Ick! - an RC Cola can. There, despite accomplishing a record-setting solo dive 12 miles off the coast of San Diego, Earle could feel her heart sink even lower.

``Trash is clogging the arteries of the planet,'' the former chief scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told an audience of several hundred assembled in an auditorium at the World Bank in downtown Washington June 14.

Sharks, Earle continued, are the least of her concerns while she's underwater. Instead, she's much more worried about becoming tangled up in discarded fishing nets that are among the billions of pounds of debris that are either dumped or washed into oceans.

``This is our world bank,'' she said, pointing to a famous photo of Earth behind her. ``It's the ultimate asset base for all of us. We're beginning to wake up to the fact that the planet is not infinitely resilient.''

Earle, whose resume is as long as some of her dives, delivered the keynote address at the second annual Potomac Watershed Trash Summit. The Maryland-based Alice Ferguson Foundation, which has organized watershed cleanups for the last 19 years, has set a goal of being trash-free by 2013.

U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., has joined 59 other top-ranking elected officials in the 14,670-square-mile watershed by signing a trash treaty that debuted at last year's summit. Though no pot of money has been designated for the effort, leaders have pledged to dedicate resources toward litter reduction, recycling and education.

Earle showed her mesmerized audience jarring photographs of an albatross carcass loaded with bottle caps and other plastic dregs, and a dead monk seal that left her pup motherless when she couldn't escape the grip of an abandoned fishing net. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of whales, seals, dolphins, turtles and sea birds die annually after feeding on trash or being trapped in old fishing gear.

Both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the NOAA are being proactive on the marine garbage front. Benjamin Grumbles, assistant administrator for the EPA Office of Water, announced that his agency is collaborating with the Ocean Conservancy to release a report this fall documenting sources of debris and whether amounts of it are rising or falling.

The NOAA cooperates with partner agencies via a special program designed to track the origin of marine litter, project its movement, clean it up and design policies to prevent it.

Diving, Earle explained, allowed her to discover that water is alive, and home to most of the life on Earth. ``We're beginning to understand the deep sea,'' said Time magazine's first ``Hero for the Planet.'' ``People think you can't hurt it because you can't see it. But everything is connected. Whatever we do to any of it, we do to all of it.''

She encouraged audience members to continue their anti-trash vigilance.

``The first step toward solving a problem is to realize you have one ... and boy do we have a problem. Our job is to make sure our world bank improves in its ability to yield dividends.''

Contact Waste News correspondent Elizabeth McGowan at elizabethherron@hotmail.com